


of monsters and men

by aominedaikis



Category: Haikyuu!!, Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen, the pov here is akane, written in the style of an interview article
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aominedaikis/pseuds/aominedaikis
Summary: @AYamamoto:I sit down with Japan’s national athletes Aomine Daiki and Kageyama Tobio and chat with them about the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, high school sports clubs and their almost decade-long friendship.http://bit.ly/23383/
Relationships: Aomine Daiki & Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	of monsters and men

**Author's Note:**

> the concept of this fic was highly inspired by [the rise of asia: nba edition by inverse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/596160), so if you're into knb ( aomine and kagami, in particular ), give that spectacular fic a read!

**Of Monsters and Men**  
by Yamamoto Akane

It’s not hard to spot Aomine and Kageyama when I first walk into Murasakibara’s Patisserie. They’re seated close to the entrance, but it’s also impossible to miss two of Japan’s strongest young athletes when the entire place has been closed off and booked up specifically for my interview with them.

“It’s cool,” Aomine told me on the phone last Sunday, when I asked if it wouldn’t be a hassle to book out an entire cafe for a three-person meeting. “The owner’s a friend. He’ll say yes.” Murasakibara Atsushi, as it turns out, is one of Aomine’s teammates from the famed Generation of Miracles of Teikou Middle School. Aomine did warn me that Murasakibara wouldn’t be interested in an interview, though.

Aomine raises a hand to beckon me over when I arrive. Kageyama is seated opposite of him. I join the two of them at their table and tell them that it’s a pleasure to meet them. “Thank you for agreeing to this interview,” I say. “You two must be busy, especially with the Olympics coming up.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Aomine says, before taking a long sip of his banana milkshake.

I want to jump straight in to ask them about the Olympics preparations, but not wanting to seem impolite and overeager, I choose to study the menu instead. But Kageyama opens up the topic for me. “Yeah. Training’s busy,” he tells me when he’s not halfway through chewing on a macaron. “We have to if we want to have play time, though.”

Kageyama looks really determined, too, and I think back to his—and Aomine’s—first time at the Olympics.

I’ve been an avid volleyball fan since I was young. Predictably, I’ve also been following Kageyama’s career since his professional debut. The day Kageyama officially became a member of the national volleyball team, my brother, who heard from a friend who heard from another friend, loudly announced to our entire household that, “Hey! Someone I played against in high school made the national team! He’s only nineteen, damn. He’s going to the Olympics! The _Olympics_ , Akane.”

Imagine my surprise when I found out that there’s an ace high school basketball player who shares the same journey to the professional stage story as Kageyama. Two young, fresh out of high school athletes known for their genius statuses both recruited as the youngest members of their respective teams. What a coincidence, right?

I tell Kageyama, “I’m sure you’ll do great this year, Kageyama-san. The world already has its eyes on you. Everyone’s excited to see you play.” He looks pleased at the compliment. I turn to Aomine and add, “You too, Aomine-san. I heard you have quite the fan club.”

Aomine snorts when I say that. “I guess,” he admits. “I’ve looked myself up on Twitter once or twice. It’s kind of weird to see all that hype about myself. I’m no Kise [Ryouta], though.” Later, I learn that he doesn’t just mean to compare himself with a popular model, but Kise Ryouta turns out to be yet another one of Aomine’s Generation of Miracles teammates.

“He’s a model. His face is on every magazine I’ve ever seen,” Kageyama jumps in. “Of course he’d be the most popular one. But he doesn’t play for the team.”

I think I get what Kageyama is saying. I don’t think Aomine is selling himself short, but Kageyama’s right. Aomine might not be a famous model, but for some people, —like me and Kageyama—his status as the national basketball team’s top scorer means just as much, if not more. Who cares if he doesn’t have the same level of fame as other popular celebrities? Aomine is good at what he does, and it’s easy to tell just by watching him on the court that he also takes pride in it. The baskets he makes count more than the number of fans he has.

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t think it matters as long as I’m scoring, right?” Aomine is saying.

I nod, but Kageyama says, “That’s not what I meant.” He’s frowning at Aomine, and I can’t help but wonder why. Kageyama makes a good point, after all.

I don’t get a chance to ask, though, because Aomine shrugs, then to Kageyama, he says, “Relax. I know what you meant.”

Kageyama does. He reaches for his iced chocolate to take a sip, then leans back in his chair. But I notice that he’s still staring at Aomine, so I ask, “What _did_ you mean, Kageyama-san?”

Aomine answers this for him. “He means that I’m a stellar athlete on the court and an equally stellar person off it, number of fans be damned,” Aomine quips. “Right, Tobio?”

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Kageyama mutters in return. Aomine looks satisfied with this, and we promptly drop the topic after.

Between you and I, though, dear readers, I’m pretty sure that’s not what Kageyama meant.

* * *

_"I don’t think it matters as long as I’m scoring, right?” —Aomine Daiki._

* * *

Here’s the thing about Aomine and Kageyama.

I’ve watched their joint video interviews from the Rio days, so I know that Aomine insists on calling Kageyama by his first name. I also know that Kageyama is friendly enough with Aomine that he lets Aomine throw his arm around his shoulders even on camera. But none of their past interviews—and believe me, I’ve done my research—have mentioned how they became friends. I—and the rest of the world—have always assumed that it probably has something to do with the fact that they’re the two youngest members of Japan’s Rio Olympics team, so it’s only natural that they’d bond over that. But I’ve always been curious about the actual story behind it, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to finally shed some light on it.

So after the waiter brings me my matcha latte and a slice of strawberry shortcake, I say, “Everyone knows that you two were a dynamic duo in Rio, even if you didn’t play the same sport. How’d that happen?”

“Honestly? Beats me,” Aomine answers. “I dunno why everyone wants a volleyball player and a basketball player to interact so badly, but I mean, I don’t mind. I like Tobio.”

Kageyama—or Tobio to Aomine, I suppose—adds, “He’s been to a couple of my games. He didn’t even understand volleyball at first.”

“Not like you knew a damn thing about basketball, either!” Aomine shoots back.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kageyama says. “I knew you were winning and looked cool on the court. Isn’t that enough?”

We’re in the middle of this conversation—Aomine is looking smug at Kageyama calling him ‘cool’—when Monster by EXO suddenly blasts from Aomine’s phone. It’s his ringtone, apparently. He stands up to take the call and excuses himself to a table two rows away from where we are sitting. Kageyama offers me a macaron as we wait for Aomine to come back.

When he does, out of curiosity, I ask, “You listen to K-Pop?”

Aomine scratches his head and shrugs. He looks a little embarrassed. “I’m not judging your music taste,” I say, to reassure him. I pull out my phone, too. “Look.” I show him my Spotify page, which is filled with Red Velvet albums.

Aomine visibly relaxes at this. He gives me another shrug, then a grin, and then he steals a glance at Kageyama. “Ah, yeah,” he says when he notices me following his gaze. “Tobio’s actually the one who got me into it.” The grin on his face grows, and it’s surprisingly infectious. It reminds me that Japan’s basketball star ace is only three years older than me, and not as scary as people make him out to be.

Aomine leans in, like he’s about to tell me a juicy secret. “Did you know that Team Japan’s starting setter listens to LOONA when he works out?”

It’s such an unexpected revelation—definitely not one that I thought I’d get from today—that I laugh. “Ah, I’m sure LOONA will be happy to hear that,” I say. I’m about to ask Kageyama if he has a favourite song, but his cheeks are pink, so I drop it. Instead, I steer us back onto the topic before we got distracted by EXO’s Monster and ask them again about their first meeting.

It turns out that Aomine and Kageyama are much closer than fans think they are. Aomine says, “Oh, that wasn’t our first meeting.”

At the same time, Kageyama turns to tell me, “The first time I met him was in high school. First year.”

 _That’s_ another unexpected revelation, but I think to the photos from the shoot for this spread, and maybe it’s not so surprising given how easy and familiar their interactions with each other seem to be. Even now, Aomine leans across the table to steal a bite from the cake on Kageyama’s plate—definitely a testament to their closeness.

“ _Before_ high school,” Aomine corrects Kageyama. “We met the spring before first year.”

“Same thing,” Kageyama counters.

And there it is. The banter between them is easy. They look entirely at ease with each other, even when they’re in the middle of a feature interview with me. Still, first year of high school for them would mean… “You’ve known each other for like, nine years now?” I ask.

“Yeah. Can you believe that? Kinda crazy how we both ended up in Rio after we graduated, too,” Aomine answers. It really is a crazy coincidence, but maybe geniuses flock to other geniuses. It seems fitting, somehow.

I ask again, “How’d you two meet?”

“In Sendai,” Kageyama says, which doesn’t really tell me anything, but then he points at Aomine and adds, “He was visiting from Tokyo.”

“Was a weird first meeting,” shares Aomine. “I was visiting my aunt and uncle—dunno why _they_ didn’t just come up to Tokyo, but anyways. One day I was napping at this park, and then out of nowhere I got woken up by a volleyball to the face. Pretty sure my cheek bruised for days.”

That makes me laugh—and wince a little. “Wow, must’ve hurt,” I comment.

Kageyama continues the story, “I was just tossing that day. Don’t know how I ended up at that park, either. But I was tossing, and—”

“And you slipped and fell _and_ messed up your toss and somehow the ball ended up on my face,” Aomine finishes for him.

Kageyama scowls. I get the feeling that if he has a volleyball with him right now, Aomine would end up with another one to the face.

I try to imagine teenage Aomine and Kageyama meeting at that park. One lying down, hand pressed to his cheek and scowling up, the other standing with a volleyball under his arm and looking down. It’s a funny image, and an incredibly unlikely start of a friendship.

“It was a start of a beautiful friendship, though, right?” I point out.

“I guess you can call it that,” says Aomine, shrugging.

He’s grinning, though. Kageyama also relaxes next to me. They share a look that makes me think that there’s more to the story, but that’s to be expected. You can’t have all those years of friendship and not have many stories behind it.

I choose to ask about high school instead.

“High school, huh?” Aomine muses. He takes a bite of his brownie—one of the specialty foods here, he tells me later—and chews through it before giving me an answer. “Guess high school taught me a lot of things. I mean, I decided to go pro ‘cause of high school.”

Kageyama gives me a more detailed answer. “I think high school was good for me,” he says. “I had a really good team to play with. I mean, everyone already knows that I played with Hinata [Shouyou, from MSBY Black Jackals] and Tsukishima [Kei, from Sendai Frogs], but everyone in high school was really good. I had fun playing with them.”

There’s something fond in Kageyama’s eyes when he says this, genuine. I don’t think Kageyama would’ve remembered me in the audience at one high school match a long time ago, but I remember watching my brother play against Karasuno High at Nationals and thinking, _Wow. That’s a solid team._ They’re a team that leaves an impact on those who watch them. So it’s no surprise that Kageyama’s fond of them, and I tell him this.

He looks surprised that I’ve seen him play at the high school stage. I laugh and tell him that I’ve been a bit of a volleyball nut since I was a kid—to which he says, “Same, me too.” The match in question was an unforgettable match, too, so I can’t help but recall it even now, many, many years later. Kageyama agrees with me. “Yeah, it was a really good match,” he says, and there’s a smile on his face.

* * *

_“I think high school was good for me. I had a really good team to play with." —Kageyama Tobio._

* * *

Twelve macarons and four slices of cake later, we’re finally wrapping up the interview. There’s just one question left, though. I have to ask it. “So I guess the final question—the one that everyone wants to know about—is: How do you feel about playing in Tokyo 2020?”

“Excited,” Aomine says. “Just like with every other game I play. Can’t be _that_ different from Rio, right?” I ask him if that means he’s confident, to which he answers, “I gotta be if we’re gunning for gold. But the team’s at their best. This guy I knew in high school—Kagami? You know, Kagami Taiga, the NBA player—is on the team with us. So we’re definitely better than we were in Rio. And _I’ve_ been perfecting my shots. My form’s the best it’s ever been, so yeah, I guess I’m confident.”

This last part he says with a smirk. It’s a little cocky, but Aomine makes it work. It looks handsome on him. But I’m still hung up on what he says before that. “Hang on,” I start. “You said you knew Kagami Taiga in high school? _The_ Kagami Taiga?” Just how many famous people did Aomine meet in high school?

Aomine laughs. “Yeah. He was my rival,” he tells me, like it’s no big deal. “That’s a story for another day. Maybe you’ll get to interview Kagami later and ask him about it.” Then he jerks his head in Kageyama’s direction and says, “But this is about me and Tobio, right? Answer her, Tobio.”

Kageyama, despite rolling his eyes at Aomine, turns to me and says, “My team’s good, too. You know Hinata [Shouyou] is on the team now. I haven’t played with him in a long time.” He doesn’t say it, but he looks excited at that prospect. And why wouldn’t he be? Imagine playing with a high school teammate on the professional stage. It’s probably even more exciting given their time spent across the net with the MSBY Black Jackals and Schweiden Adlers rivalry, too. “It’ll be good to play home, too,” he adds.

I agree. Playing at home turf might be a pressure to many, but it seems like for these two it’s a massive morale boost. The higher the stakes, the better the game, right?

There’s no doubt that both Aomine and Kageyama—like the rest of our national athletes—are raring to give it their best to represent their home country when the Tokyo 2020 Olympics finally rolls around. And their best, many have concluded, might just be the key to bring us the gold. Regardless of what happens, though, when we all get up to leave, —after Aomine gives me a fist bump—I wish them the best of luck with their future, be it in their professional careers or personal lives. Aomine grins. Kageyama gives me what seems to be a grateful nod. I tell them that it’s been a pleasure talking to them, and it _is_.

When I first got the call assigning me with this interview, I’ll admit that I was nervous. This is my first feature, and to think that I’ll be interviewing two high profile athletes! They both have a reputation of being ‘monsters’ on the court, and I couldn’t help but worry about how I’d be able to match them off it.

But this interview has been nothing short of an absolute pleasure, and I’m grateful that I got this opportunity.

There’s a certain charm to learning that our favourite sports stars are still regular human beings off the court, and monster status or otherwise, both Aomine and Kageyama have reminded me just how lucky I am to be able to see that.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this was just an incredibly self-indulgent crossover fic featuring two of my favourite 'monstrous' characters from sports animanga, but i hope you enjoy! please leave a kudos and/or comment if you do!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/ghostbrides) and talk to me about aomine & kageyama.


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